In the news this past week, scientists have discovered the secret of looking young: volume of facial fat. As you get older, and lose facial plumpitude, you tend to look more mature. I could have told them that: Babies, who have extremely fat heads, are the youngest-looking folk around. And admit it, you meet someone with really chubby cheeks, and you can't tell whether they're 30 or 50. (With my big, round Irish head, well into my 50's I will be mistaken for an extremely large and worn out middle schooler.)

What bothered me about this news report, though, is how they carried out the study. To figure it out researchers injected dye and latex into the faces of 14 cadavers, and then, I guess, had a beauty pageant to see which of the dead heads looked the most youthful.

For years, I've been trying to figure out what to do with my dead body. I've considered being buried. (One tip to the undertaker: Take a look at any picture taken when I was alive — my hair really was supposed to look that way. I wasn't electrocuted.) While I'm sure they'd do a nice job at making me look good for the viewing — dressing me up in a suit, folding my hands across my belly, giving me a flower for my lapel — once they put me in the ground, it won't take long before I look like one of those zombies in "Night of the Living Dead." What's the point of wearing your best outfit when soon you're going to be moldier than that chili you forgot about in the back of your fridge?

I had considered donating my body to science, but then I started reading about the consequences. Sure, your corpse could go to a medical school, where some future doctor could learn how to do an appendectomy or a heart bypass without killing anyone. Even then, I worry about some kooky med student giving me a nickname (Mr. Big Head or Spiky Hair, for instance), putting a cigar in my mouth, and wheeling me around the school at parties. But at least I'd be saving some schmuck in the future who'd have a properly trained surgeon when it came time to remove a gall bladder.

But it's just as likely that they'll sign you up for some car crash experiment where they slam you into a brick wall at 60 mph (no lie) or let your body sit out in the woods so they can help "CSI"-types understand rotting corpses (really, no lie!) or worse, shoot you out of a cannon so they can make circus acts safer (OK, maybe a slight lie, but who can be sure? You might end up as a disembodied head in a tray, your plumped-up cheeks injected with dye and latex, while scientists try to guess your age.) No thanks.

I could also go with a new process called "Alkaline Hydrolysis," where they put you in a big stainless-steel thermos filled with lye, and then subject you to 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch. It's basically a big pressure cooker. When they're done, you're the consistency of a smoothie, and they pour you down the drain. I don't really have a problem with the whole process, but I am kind of uncomfortable with being poured out into the sewer system. I don't think it's unreasonable to object to being flushed away.

After weighing all the equally unappetizing options, I've settled on the idea of cremation. I know I would be contributing, in my own small way, to global warming, but it has its benefits. It's quick and cheap, and all that's left behind is a little pile of dusty, gray ashes, probably less than I regularly empty out of my backyard fire pit.

My wife and kids have been directed to take my ashes and sprinkle them into the river up north where I like to fish. I've eaten so many of the fish out of the river, it'd be nice to return the favor. For years, any time the subject of death comes up with my kids, I've got a stock answer: "Repeat after me: cremation, and then throw me in the river. But remember, in that order."

Being turned into a pile of dust may not be ideal, but in a way, I'll live on. After I'm gone, every time one of my kids vacuums, or sneezes, or hears the song "Dust in the Wind," they'll think of dear old Dad.

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